This is a bittersweet tale but I think that you will like it. I have published a couple of versions but this is the one I have specifically been asked to republish:
Some of you may think you know this story but you do not know it all, or at least you do not know the whole story and the context in which it occurred. Many of you have heard parts of it but none of you know the whole story. I have changed some of the names to protect privacy.
This is the tale of how a group of people in funny clothing saved my life.
Please grant me this one favor: if you start to read this, please read it through to the final end. This story is important to me and is a bit difficult to tell and it will not go where you expect.
Thank you, Zyggie, for asking the right questions last week and making me tell the story.
Prologue:
I have seen the shadows in a desert night.
I have walked the corridors of abandoned buildings.
The landscape of the Apocalypse is dire and wrapped in smiles and pain.
By the late 1980’s, the drumbeats were constant. They came at you from every side.
TV.
Radio.
Newspapers.
Phone.
AIDS.
AIDS.
AIDS.
And on and on.
Walter Cronkite calmly read the numbers on the nightly news. 10,000. 15,000. 20,000. The spiral went up and up.
“The Federal Government has warned that those who engage in high risk activity…”
“Gay men and intravenous drug users are at special risk…”
“Hemophiliacs and children requiring blood transfusions are being affected in unprecedented numbers…”
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
It was a constant pounding.
I began to fear answering the telephone. Each week the answering machine contained a new one.
“Jimmy died last night.”
“I had to take Al to the hospital.”
“The funeral is Friday.”
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
At work it was the same.
“No, you can’t get AIDS from a bathroom door handle.”
“She looks awful. I bet she has AIDS.”
“Betty lost her son – you know, the fag. AIDS.”
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
As every drop hit my psyche, a hammer pounded it into my skull.
I felt as though I were drowning. Every ounce of strength that I had was being taken to keep my own grip on reality let alone being there for others.
I know what it means to go insane as I was staring at the Mountains of Madness.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
I even tried a therapist to try to deal but he had to keep rescheduling and rescheduling as he got more and more AIDS patients. Finally, he suggested I look elsewhere.
I could have fought a person. I could have fought an animal but how the hell do you fight something that is a concept? Something that has no body. Something that is stalking you in the shadows but refuses to come out and goddamn fight!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
My batteries were dying and so was I.
They say it is always darkest before the dawn.
Enter Floyd, Part I
In an effort to make something out of my life, I had enrolled in grad school. After class, I would hang out in the student union and had fallen in with the science fiction geeks. Big surprise there, right?
Anyway, a bunch of them were talking about some medieval thing coming up that they were all going to.
Did I want to go?
“What is this group called again?”
“The Society for Creative Anachronism. You know, the SCA?”
“Is this like Monty Python?”
“Uh, no. We really hit people. You have to know about them”
I did not know but had the weekend off and had to do something or I would sit at home and get more and more depressed.
“Hey, Mike. You’re a restaurant manager. You okay with making dinner if we bring the supplies?”
“Sure.”
Little did I know.
So that is how I ended up in a string tie and work clothes in a forest in West Virginia.
Upon arrival, my friends had determined that there were a few problems with the menu for the event and the facilities.
First, the menu for the feast was unique to say the least. The cook’s idea of proper medieval food was pressed turkey rolls, stuffed with cranberries and sour cream, and topped with American cheese.
That is where the second problem came up. No one had checked that the utilities were turned on at the site – and they weren’t. So the pressed turkey rolls were served …cold.
Add to this the fact that it had been raining for the entire prior week and the temperature onsite was a balmy 55 degrees and you have the idea.
I had expected to be asked to make burgers and some brats and maybe some mac and cheese. That’s not quite how it turned out.
Upon my arrival, I had been presented with a 60 lb. suckling pig, a bag of apples, a bag of pears, and a double hibachi.
Seriously?
The only whole animal I had ever cooked was a chicken! At the restaurant, the only pork we served was ground!
All other thoughts flew out of my head as the fact that I had people to cook for filled my noggin from stem to stern.
I am nothing if not a cook.
I had a purpose.
Wading into the battle, there were a couple of issues. First and foremost was the fact that the pig was approximately 30 inches long and the skewers I had been given to spit it with were about 24 inches long. So, before I knew it, my hand was somewhere up a pig I never thought it would be wiring two spits together to hold the pig for cooking.
Second issue: While I could certainly stuff the pig with apples and pears, we had no way of sewing it up. I didn’t know that you are supposed to bring very long needles and catgut to sew it up and didn’t have them if I did.
So, we came up with a unique solution. Kite string. About 300 feet of it. We just kept turning and turning. That poor thing looked like something out of “Charlotte’s Web”, but it worked. Then we coated it with honey and spices and popped it on the hibachi and prayed for the best.
That is when the third issue cropped up. What comes out of a pig when you are cooking it?
Grease!
Riiiiiiight!!!
Every so often, grease would pour out of the pig and into the hibachi. Flames would shoot up WHOOOSHing up higher than my head. We would pick up the pig, carry it about ten feet away, put it out, wait for the flames to die down and put it back.
“Meltdown!!!” we would scream each time and grab the pig. The tree above us was wilting and we were taking bets on when the eyes would pop.
I won.
Then, we had our final issue. As we were cooking this juicy pig full of fruit and roasting away, another chemical reaction was occurring. Something was building up inside of the pig.
Right!
STEAM!
Imagine our surprise when the kite string began to burn through and pieces of jet powered fruit began popping out of the pig.
Pop!
Wha?
POP!
DIVE!!!!
POP! POP! POP! POP!
We huddled on the ground behind a picnic table while the porcine wonder continued to expel fruit at escape velocity. I swear it looked like the scene from the movie “Alien” where the creature explodes out of the guy’s stomach.
Finally, the noises died down and the pig cooked merrily away.
Not having known better, we had placed an apple in its mouth before cooking and that poor apple had been through hell.
After about three hours of blazing atomic fireball, we decided that the porker was done. Both eyes had popped and we had burned off an ear but it was done. It was a charred mass of pig.
We laid it out on a platter to cool and that is when i saw the loose string sticking out of the charred mass. Pulling on it, the crust began to peel away until it just slid away revealing the most beautiful looking pig ever. It was truly beautiful despite the fact that the eyes had popped and we had burned off an ear.
The cremated apple had stuck to the teeth and could not be dislodged so someone got the great idea to fix it up. Grabbing some nail polish, they painted it bright red.
Carrying it onto the hall, my friends all sat down at the table to eat while the whole room stared at the pig. Then at the pressed turkey rolls on their plates. Then back at the pig.
The cook took one look at the pig and disappeared. I never saw him again.
There was just one light working in the room and that was directly in front of the “Prince”. Staring at his plate, he came to a decision. Picking up his plate, he wandered out of the light. We heard a thump as a plate emptied into the garbage.
Then, he appeared out of the dark at the edge of our table.
“Please, Sir. May I have some more?”
We fed the whole event from that pig.
Floyd the Pig, Part II
Later that same night.
It kept raining the whole day and night. Everyone at the event had either hidden somewhere to drink or were trying to keep warm in their tents.
Guess what I did?
RIGHT!
I was drunk off my ass sitting in a shelter house talking to a friend trying to stay warm and basically babbling. We were so drunk that we were holding each other on the bench to keep from falling off.
The night was dripping along when DJ appeared. DJ was a tall, cadaverous looking, blond man dressed all in black. He had missed dinner and was hungry.
The platter containing the remains of the pig was on a table behind us. What is left of a pig once you are done eating. A few bones…the tail…and what else? The head.
We heard DJ fiddling with the platter but were honestly too drunk to pay too much attention. Until –
“My, what a handsome pig you are.”
Wha?
We carefully turned around so as not to draw attention to ourselves. DJ had picked up the pig head and was doing his best Hamlet and Yorick imitation. We quickly turned back around before he noticed.
“My, what a sexy pig you are!”
Turning back around, we noticed him staring eye to eye with the pig head. Titillated but slightly terrified, we quickly swivelled back away before he saw.
“My, what a sensuous pig you are!”
That did it. No longer caring and too drunk not to watch, we swivelled around and planted our feet to keep from falling off.
DJ had picked up the pig head and was playing with it. He has forced his hand up the neck of the pig into where its brain had used to be before I had boiled it away. His thumb went below the tongue of the beast and he began to do ventriloquism with it.
That is how Floyd the Pig was born.
But there was a problem with Floyd. He had a speech impediment. Right…the apple. He couldn’t move his jaw. Caramelized and covered with nail polish it was stuck there.
So DJ ate it!
Popping the jaw, he began to talk to the pig head.
“Hi! Would you like to meet my friend, Floyd?”
Who could resist?
Now that Floyd was his best friend, DJ began to make the rounds of the camp to introduce everyone.
Imagine a tall gentleman in a cloak steps out of the dark.
“Hi! Would you like to meet my friend, Floyd?” and he would appear from under the cloak.
We traced him all around the camp by the screams.
Finally, deciding that Floyd was now his best friend, and having introduced him to everyone in the woods, DJ decided that the pig head deserved a night on the town. Hopping on his motorcycle, he started up and got ready to go.
There was, however, a problem. He only had one helmet so guess who got it? Right! FLOYD! And he was off into the night!
We later found out he had grabbed someone else’s helmet and it didn’t even belong to him.
DJ and Floyd hit the hottest night spots in Huntington, West Virginia that night, and DJ paid the cover charge for the pig head! All I can envision is a pig head rising above the dancers going “Staying Alive! Staying Alive!”.
As Floyd was now his best friend, DJ was now determined to keep him around as long a he could. If your best friend was a pig head and you wanted to keep him as long as possible, what would you do with him?
You’d put him in the fridge! Right next to the eggs, the butter, the orange juice… and that is what he did and headed to bed.
About six am, DJ’s girlfriend came home from work and decided she wanted some orange juice.
He said all he heard was a scream…and then she began to beat him to death with the pig.
Floyd the Pig, Part III
Have you ever had a really champion hangover?
You know the kind I mean, right? The ones where you can hear your eyeballs moving. That was me.
To stay dry, I had put my sleeping bag on a picnic table in a shelter house and had gone to sleep. Consciousness was not my friend.
RRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPP!!!
“Te Hee Hee Hee! Te Hee Hee Hee! Quick! He’s waking up!”
RRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPP!!!
“Te Hee Hee Hee! Te Hee Hee Hee!”
Wha?
RRRRRRIIIIIIIIPPPPP!!!
Maybe I better pay attention to this?
Opening my eyes, they were stabbed by the morning light. PAIN!
“Te Hee Hee Hee! Te Hee Hee Hee!”
RRRRRRIIIIIIIIPPPPP!!!
That is when I realized I could not move.
Lifting my head, I looked down my body and realized that my feet were duct taped within the sleeping bag to the picnic table beneath me. There was another band around my waist. A third band of duct tape was wrapped around my chest and shoulders where they peeked out of the bag.
“Te Hee Hee Hee! Te Hee Hee Hee!”
Turning my head, I saw two ladies standing nearby holding a large roll of duct tape and giggling.
“What is going on?” I groaned out.
“Te Hee Hee Hee! Te Hee Hee Hee! We are going to find out what is under your kilt!”
“Very funny, ladies. Now, please cut me loose.”
“Not until we find out what is under that kilt!”
With that a five finger glacier came down my boxers and grabbed something no other woman has seen since my mother.
“Aighh!” I shouted and jumped. Or more like skipped as the picnic table moved a few inches as the glacier disappeared.
“We are going to find out what is under your kilt!” and again the glacier returned.
Grab. Arch. Grab. Arch. Eventually, the ladies jumped on top of me to keep the table from moving.
That is when I noticed that everyone at the event was standing around the shelterhouse and watching…but no one was helping!
Eventually, Randy strode up and pulled them off of me.
“Girls! Leave that boy alone! If he wanted to sleep with you, he would have done it. Just like everybody else.”
With that, he cut me loose.
That is when Randy told probably the only lie in his whole life as he grabbed the band of duct tape around my shoulders.
“If we do this real fast, it won’t hurt!”
Epilogue
Several hours later, after the bleeding had stopped and the ladies had apologized, I sat on a bench drinking a beer and mourning my lost chest hair.
Sitting next to me was Bear, one of the furriest men I have ever met. He was sucking on a cigarette and watching me.
That is when it hit me.
“Whoa!” I said.
“What?” asked Bear.
“I just realized I haven’t thought about the real world for three straight days.” I felt great!
Bear took a long drag on his cigarette.
“Welcome to the SCA!”, he said.
Tales From An Old Ford 